Tag: Asheville Design Center

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A unique community “visioning process” to determine how Asheville residents hope city-owned property on Haywood Street and Page Avenue will be used welcomed members of the public to two recent open houses.

Asheville City Council approved a public visioning process to solicit broad community input on the future use of city-owned property across from the U.S. Cellular Center and the Basilica of St. Lawrence. Council also voted to demolish a city-owned building adjacent to the area at 33-35 Page Avenue. The building was the headquarters of the Asheville Sister Cities organization before the structure was condemned in November last year.

While the theme is familiar — what to do with city-owned property facing the Basilica of St. Lawrence and the U.S. Cellular Center? — the current proposal has a twist: let the whole community weigh in on the future of a beloved, yet contentious, space.

One clear winner from the 2015 City Council elections: local hopes for a public space for the city-owned lots facing the Basilica of St. Lawrence and the U.S. Cellular Center. Not so clear: exactly what kind of space Asheville needs and who will pay for it. The city’s Planning and Economic Development committee took up the hot potato issue to try to figure out how to move forward.

Give!Local raised nearly $1,000 in its opening day and many of the nonprofits raised additional money at the kickoff event. Thirty nonprofits, their boards, two food vendors, three bands, a dinosaur and a ghost pepper all convened along with about 200 people from the public.

Free party at The Orange Peel to celebrate Asheville’s first Give!Local campaign THE MISSION: To raise funds and awareness for 30 worthy local nonprofits that make a big difference where we live. To make giving simple and fun, no matter how small or large the gift. THE METHOD: Offer contributors hundreds of fun and valuable incentives that […]

When the first-ever LEAF Downtown festival took place on Aug. 1 and 2 in Pack Square Park, it wasn’t just the festival’s new location that was making its debut: This year, the organization was able to unveil its all-new U-LEAF stage — a mobile art stage recently completed by AVL DesignBuild Studio, a summer internship […]

The Burton Street Community Peace Garden is filled with art installations, metal structures, canopies, reading nooks and tidy rows of vegetables. But this garden is known for growing something more than food — neighbors say this garden works to grow connections in a community with a history of being intersected.

As local leaders wrestle with different ideas about which route is best for an Interstate 26 connector through downtown Asheville, the N.C. Department of Transportation has put together a series of maps and charts to help inform the public about the options.

Led by the Asheville Design Center, a grass-roots effort is under way to build a new public plaza near the Haywood Street entrance of the U.S. Cellular Center in downtown Asheville, named for the famed architect/builder of the Basilica of St. Lawrence, Rafael Guastavino.

All of the blinds are down at 8 College St., but the red awning with the words Asheville Design Center remains even though the center itself has moved. After six years at its downtown location, the ADC has found a new home in a wing at the William Randolph School. (Photo by Caitlin Byrd)

It’s been a busy summer at the Burton Street Peace Garden in West Asheville so far. A new outdoor classroom space is being built on the Peace Garden’s lot as part of a 10-week design-build studio summer course organized by the design center. Check out our video of the site, currently under construction.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation on Wednesday announced its decision to delay the construction of the long-awaited I-26 connector project one year — until 2014 — to further study impacts in the area. NCDOT will also include the locally developed Alternative 4b in its studies and try to reduce one of the project’s most controversial features — its impact on the Burton Street neighborhood. However, the Asheville Design Center, who developed 4b, say that NCDOT shut them out of the decision.

The Asheville Design Center (ADC), which has been involved voluntarily with the work on the I-26 project since 2006, anticipates that the N.C. Department of Transportation will vote soon to include Alternate 4b in their Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). When this happens, we will have better data available to plan and communicate changes that will […]

A report on the options for I-26 alternatives by former Asheville Planning Director Scott Shuford is “incomplete” and leaves out several key factors, according to a critique by Dr. David Johnson, a longtime professional planner and professor emeritus of planning at the University of Tennessee.

A report by former Asheville planning director Scott Shuford comparing the impact of I-26 connector alternatives says the plan drafted by the Asheville Design Center will have the most overall impact on several surrounding areas.

Alternative 3, a plan for the future I-26 connector backed by the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce and some Buncombe County commissioners, would demolish about 25 houses in the predominantly African-American Burton Street neighborhood, leaving 13 others nearby facing a sound wall.